


Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday

by ambiguously



Series: Starfall [10]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Force Ghosts, Ghost Sex, Multi, Non-Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 21:26:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6441388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a certain point of view, Leia is alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday

She's alone, from a certain point of view.

From the outside looking in, Leia has been alone for years. Han pulled his vanishing act after one fight too many over things neither could change. Luke stepped away years ago in a vain attempt to give them all a normal life. Most of her friends are dead, and those who aren't don't often stay around now that the latest war is over. Even Chewie is off living his own life, though he writes her regularly, stuck in the same habit from when he was her one link to Han's current whereabouts.

She's used to alone.

Which is why this scares her, just a bit, in that place under her ribs. Leia could face alone. She's good at it. She's not used to having somewhere there beside her, someone keeping an eye out for her, someone to chat in her ear when she's lonely or just listen when she's tired and frustrated. She grew accustomed to having no one but herself to counsel her thoughts, after everything fell apart.

She's frightened of coming to rely on this, the warm touch inside her head when she could use a hug, the comforting presence she can see in a faded outline sitting in the opposite chair when she's in her rooms by herself. When she was small, she saw her birth mother gazing sadly into her little cradle, never speaking, never reaching in to hold her. A Force ghost, Luke explained, much later, a little jealous. Now he's the ghost, and Leia waits anxiously for the day he stops visiting her just as their mother did.

Also, she doesn't believe in ghosts.

 _"You're not gonna guess what that kid is up to this time."_ She can't see Han, not at all, but his voice is as warm and charming in her ear as the first time he stepped up behind her to give her a lesson in slapdash spaceship repairs. She always expects his arms to reach around her and rest his hands over hers to loosen a bolt.

She wonders when he'll fly away again, too.

There's tea in a soothing blend steeping at her desk. Offering any to her guests would be pointless. Once, she listened to a ghost story about some wandering spirit who was soothed by burning sweet herbs. The cultures on many worlds hold that incense or candles evoke calm in the dead. Leia doesn't think her two guests can smell her tea. It's a nice thought, although Han was never a fan of this blend and Luke mixed his own strong, bitter concoctions to fuel his midnight searches through old books.

Han is full of stories. Not all of them are about Ben, although many are, describing a distant world Leia will never set foot on and a new path that isn't about making up for the past as much as it is about moving forward. Han checks in on Chewbacca from time to time, confirming the assurances in his letters. He hasn't said in so many words but she's positive Han plays tricks on Lando whenever he visits that planet his old buddy owns half a galaxy away. Han is still a wanderer.

Luke walks in the shadow world to see those he loves, and he too has gone to observe and to guide, but his spirit has never been as restless as Han's. He's rarely far from Leia's side, and always returns with her first nervous mental call.

From a certain point of view, Leia Organa is alone. From her own point of view, she has her two best friends with her and that's all that is important to her.

She works into the night. Nothing new there. One woman's Resistance is the same woman's headache when it comes time to reestablish the basics of a government. She's done this before. She'll defend the next Republic and help that one rebuild as well, if the future unfolds as the past has done. Same knotty problems, same complicated solutions which make no one happy but which keep the peace. Her life's work, measured in the deaths she's prevented instead of the many she's caused.

Sleep is the space between meetings. She's climbed into her bed alone for the last dozen years, give or take a lover along the way. Lovers need time and attention, and Leia's are already dedicated. On the bad days, she considers that must be the reason Han and Luke both left her in the end. On the better days, she remembers neither of them would have loved her half as much if she'd been any other way.

"Are you here?" she asks out loud in the darkened room. She can reach them with her mind if she chooses. Speech is more personal, less urgent. She's not summoning either back from a supernatural visit elsewhere.

 _"Always."_ Could be a promise, could be a threat. When she has time to herself, time to think, time to go over all permutations of her current life, which is to say time she almost never can spare, Leia acknowledges her situation is stranger even than it used to be. She's haunted, quite literally, and she is less afraid of the spirits than of the certainty she holds that one night she will call out and no one will answer.

Tonight they're with her. That has to be what counts. Luke's voice is a breath away. She can almost feel the fond touch of Han's fingers in her hair as a shivery tingle.

She was better at this, once. When the three of them were alive and together, Leia didn't hesitate to tell either of the men she loved what she wanted or needed. Communication made the difference between forging a strong, reliable bond among their three very disparate lives, and leaving gaps for resentments and fears to burrow in. She'd lost Luke to his fear, disguised in suffocating layers of his love for her and for the child the three of them should have raised together. She'd lost Han to the mutual resentments they built up between them after what happened because they didn't.

There's no room between them all now but she can no longer form the words she wants to ask.

Fortunately, she doesn't have to.

Death is only a door, Luke told her once. His soul is on the other side of that door, but his voice is soft in her ear, whispering endearments. She can feel the half-breath of Han's lips against the crown of her head, not disturbing so much as a molecule of air but nevertheless a distinct presence. It's love. It never stopped being love even when no two of them had been on the same planet for years, even when each point in their triangle tried to form a new connection outside, even when they fought and cried. Even when two of them walked through that door, leaving her here. 

No hands, no lips, but Leia knows exactly where each one is touching her. Her own fingers will do against her neck, fluttering across the skin to match the path of kisses she knows float just above her. She can lean her own face over, welcome the brush of feather-light presence against a cheek, at her nose, and around the sensitive shell of her ear.

A warm incantation of love echoes in her mind, spoken without words and bound with emotion just as strong as life. Her thoughts blend gently with Luke's, the same as ever. Han is fainter, less clearly defined, but she knows Luke is drawing him in, using his own strong existence to keep the man he loves from fading. They are joined on a different plane that Leia can see or experience with them, not yet. She can only imagine the sublime blending of being as one cascades into the other.

When her work is finished, a year or a decade or a century from now, she wants to know how that feels.

All she feels tonight is her own skin. One hand cups a breast, taking the feel of the once-firm shape as another's hand lays over her, enjoying. She never has understood the fascination.

 _"Envy,"_ Luke teases.

 _"They're nice,"_ Han says back.

It's possible they'll start bickering, which is more difficult to explain when Leia is conducting a meeting than when she's in bed. She stops their banter with her other hand, sliding down her belly, also not as firm as it used to be. Two pregnancies and one birth exacted their payment on her body, never mind the cost to the rest of the galaxy.

She won't regret her decisions, not one of them, not ever. Regret is for fools who think they can rewrite time by wishing. Her days move only forward.

 _"I never was good at that,"_ Luke whispers into her ear. His eyes turned always to the past, looking for answers in history, in their family, in how what came before has shaped what is. Han lived in the present moment more than anyone else she's ever met: here, now, today, tonight. She's the one who has to make plans, has to ensure foundations are set, has to build the future.

It's a wonder the three of them ever managed to be in the same place when they were all alive.

But they are here with her.

Her fingers know this dance, slipping between her legs with decades of long practice. When she was younger, when she had a home and a different future stretching before her, Leia thought she should keep herself from getting caught in romantic snarls. Her parents hinted strongly that her birth had been a result of a headstrong young woman getting in over her head with the wrong boy. Leia told herself she wouldn't make the same mistake. When desire bloomed for a handsome face, she learned the soft places on her own skin, the means to let herself indulge in her needs without risking her higher purpose. A knowing hand stroking her body, and a gasp against her own pillow, these saved her from her birth mother's heartbroken fate, she believed.

She's older now.

It could be memory, it could be wishful thinking, how the brush of her thumb doesn't feel much different from the stroke of a quick, eager tongue. Her own fingers part her with care, but it could be another's hand reaching in to find easier access to the tender pink skin. Her clit is flushed with anticipation, and she knows just how to press and how to back away, one finger slipping into herself to seek out moisture and the intoxicating pressure up and in just like that.

If she could feel their hands on her, she'd want them wrapping around her, arms entwining as she felt each kiss on her face before the two of them found each other's mouths to press in for more. If she could sense the heat of their bodies, she would be fever-hot here in the middle, sliding sensuously against the slick, hot, sensitive skin erect against each of her hips. She'd want to tangle her hands on one's hair, pushing the face between her thighs as the other roamed a mouth up the angles of her throat, together bringing her to the edge. She'd feel the first good, thick thrust inside of her as her mind clasped to her brother's, as he reached into Han to hardwire him directly into their mingled desires. She'd be stretched between them, helping to wring out their pleasure, one buried inside her, or watching them fall upon one another like hungry devils as she lay sated.

Nothing is the same now, not even with the warm glow suffusing through her. No physical forms, no bodies to touch, and even if she feels them beside her in the bed, neither one will ever sleep again. They are on one side of the door, and Leia stands on the other side alone.

A small, sorrowful part of her keeps whispering inside her head that this isn't real, that she's gone more than a bit mad with her many losses, that there can't be ghosts here with her telling her what she wants to hear, that everything Leia has lost is gone forever.

The dark piece of her own heart feels the intrusion of her own three fingers filling herself, and scorns her in consideration, a sad, lonely old woman masturbating to her memories as she loses her grasp on reality.

The painful reminder is enough to steal a sob from her chest.

Then she feels it, not solid, not anything like what she's felt in her mind, yet as real as the bed under her back. Her own two hands are busy, but there's a hand cupping her chin. _"You are loved,"_ she feels, the thought driven into her mind, almost a command but Luke swore he'd never use that mind trick on her. She fills with memories, seeing herself from outside, all the past days they shared together.

"I can't do this," she says out loud, alone in her room, close to her peak, mind befuddled with pleasure and grief. There's so much she can't do and can never have again. Her future stretches out in a solitary line, a path she'll walk, and hobble, and crawl by herself until she collapses and her bones fall to dust.

 _"Sure you can, sweetheart. One day at a time."_ Tomorrow Han might dissolve into the Force. Tonight he's here next to her. Tonight is what matters.

Leia comes fast, not in a hot flush that shakes her whole body but in a quick shot of good feeling. She may be imagining the kiss against her mouth, and the matching kiss against the back of her neck as she bends into an absent face, letting her heartbeat slow to normal. This can't be real. Force ghosts never made much sense to her, even with Luke's patient explanations.

 _"I don't believe in Force ghosts, either,"_ Han says.

That's enough for Leia to stare where she's sure he would be. Beside her, she can hear Luke's ghost manage a perplexed, _"Han? You have noticed you're dead, right?"_

 _"Temporary inconvenience."_ She can hear his warm chuckle. He might be a con artist but he's an awful liar.

How mad does she have to be to think her dead husband is joking around to make her smile? How deep must she have fallen into her well of grief to hear her brother's aggrieved sigh next to her? If her mind has been playing tricks on her, they're good tricks, and Leia doesn't ever want them to stop. She'll take a bit of madness in exchange for these restful moments.

 _"We're not going anywhere,"_ Luke says. _"Whenever you call, I'll hear you and I'll drag Han here with me. If I'm the only one who believes in Force ghosts, I'll believe in them for all three of us. You're not alone. You're not going to be alone."_

The painful earnestness echoes inside her mind, coming to rest inside her heart as a promise.

 _"Same,"_ Han says, and his casual, fond tone is enough to pull out that smile she knows he's digging for.

Leia doesn't believe in ghosts. She does believe in these two wonderful fools, at least for tonight. Tomorrow can wait.

end


End file.
